


baby please don't go

by pledispristin (orphan_account)



Category: NU'EST
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic (kind of), Living Together, M/M, Pining, Post-breakup, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 22:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12177462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/pledispristin
Summary: "The world is pulled from underneath Jonghyun’s feet, and suddenly he feels lost – lost about a breakup that happened two years ago, lost about what Minki wants from him, lost about the idea that Minki is here, in Seoul, and Jonghyun—didn’t prepare for this situation. Somehow, he’d managed to convince himself that Minki would always be in Paris, that it was permanent, that he’d never see Minki again and he’d be totally fine with that. And now Minki is here. And he doesn’t know what to do."or, Minki comes back and Jonghyun has to deal with it.





	baby please don't go

**Author's Note:**

> This all started because me and my friends were talking about how domestic the still life teasers are...this is way less domestic and a lot more angsty than intended, but I hope it's still suitable.
> 
> Title from Hotshot's [Jelly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqwJNSi0E84).

Minki leaves in August.

Jonghyun remembers it clearly – remembers waking up to a Post-It note on his fridge door, remembers running across campus to Minki’s apartment, remembers the truck piled with boxes and the couch space taken up by two suitcases.

“What the hell,” he had said. “What the _hell_ , Minki.”

“It’s an opportunity,” Minki had replied. Jonghyun remembers him looking dazed, ruffled, a far cry from the collected Minki that he was used to. Jonghyun had dealt with many incarnations of Minki, but never this—he’d never seen Minki looking so _lost_ as he did in that moment. “It’s _Paris_. They _want_ me to go. It—”

“It’s good for you,” Jonghyun said. His brain slowly processed what was going on. _Minki leaving_. _Minki going to Paris_. Minki leaving _him_. “What does it mean for us?”

Minki looked at him, and even now Jonghyun would be able to recognize that look. It’s the _the answer is obvious_ look, the _you know what it means_ look, the _sorry Jonghyun, this is just how it has to be_. “I don’t think _we_ would be a good idea right now, Jonghyun.”

Jonghyun doesn’t remember being as sad as he should have been. Maybe if he had been, it would have made a difference, but maybe it would have just made things worse. He remembers nodding. He remembers the exact words he said: “Okay, Minki. I hope this works out for you.” _I hope you don’t regret it_.

All in all, it ended rather anticlimatically—a three-year relationship, ended in five minutes. Minhyun would tell him later that he should have done more, that he should have made Minki consider changing his mind, that he could have stopped it from happening. Jonghyun brushes him off every time.

Jonghyun has never been one to deal on what might have been.

 

It’s October when he gets a phone call in the middle of the night. The area code isn’t Korean, and the number isn’t one he has saved in his contacts, but he picks up anyway. “Hello?”

“Jonghyun?”

_There’s no way._

“Jonghyun, is this you?”

_No._

“I guess not. Sorry to disturb you—”

“Minki?”

It’s funny, Jonghyun thinks. He was so collected in the breakup. He’d been _fine_. He’d gotten over it and stuck with his friend group and not made a big deal out of it because it was _fine_ that Minki had dumped him. But now it’s 11:45 and the sound of Minki’s voice is like a sucker punch to the stomach and he’s suddenly feeling a rush of _everything_ he didn’t let himself feel two years ago.

“I’m at the airport.”

“What?”

“The airport. In Incheon. I—I’m back in Korea.”

 _Oh_. The world is pulled from underneath Jonghyun’s feet, and suddenly he feels lost – lost about a breakup that happened two years ago, lost about what Minki wants from him, lost about the idea that Minki is _here_ , in Seoul, and Jonghyun—didn’t prepare for this situation. Somehow, he’d managed to convince himself that Minki would always be in Paris, that it was permanent, that he’d never see Minki again and he’d be totally fine with that. And now Minki is _here_. And he doesn’t know what to do.

“I know—I know we didn’t end on a good note. And I’m sorry. But I really need a place to stay and I don’t know how long I’ll need one and I can’t afford to indefinitely stay in a hotel and—”

“Okay,” Jonghyun says. It’s a stupid decision. He regrets it as soon as he says it—regrets not making something up, regrets not telling Minki to call Dongho or Minhyun or Aaron instead, regrets not hanging up the phone and going to sleep. But he’s said it now and he can’t take it back so he sighs and closes his laptop and adds, “I’ll pick you up from the airport.”

“You don’t have to—”

The smart decision would be to agree, and give Minki his address and tell him to get a taxi. That’s what Minhyun would tell him to do. But Jonghyun has never been good at making smart decisions.

 

“Your apartment is nice,” Minki says when he steps in through the door, finding a space on the living room floor to put his suitcase.

He doesn’t look how Jonghyun remembers. Or rather, he looks the same, but there’s _something_ about him that’s different. In his memory, Minki is larger than life. That’s what always caught Jonghyun’s eye about him—the way he filled up every space he entered, the way he attracted attention with his mere existence. But this Minki looks like he wants to disappear into himself, to sink into the floor and leave.

“I’m sorry,” he adds. “I know this is sudden. I know—” He trails off. Jonghyun knows Minki enough to know that he was going to bring up the breakup, but Minki never finishes the sentence. Jonghyun prepares himself to live with the elephant in the room of what they used to mean to each other. “As soon as I can, I’ll move out. Promise.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jonghyun hears his own voice saying. “There’s a spare bedroom. Third door on the left. You can make yourself at home.”

 

“Are you _stupid_?”

Jonghyun expected this, but he still winces as Dongho glares at him from across the table. “He just got here. He needs to stay _somewhere_.”

“Jesus Christ.” Dongho takes a sip out of his coffee, and Jonghyun can’t tell if he’s angry at him or at Minki or just at the world around him. “You’re such an _idiot_. Only an _idiot_ would let a guy who dumped him to go off to _Paris_ live in his house. I can’t believe you, Kim Jonghyun.”

“It’s not like he literally just dumped me,” Jonghyun said. “It was two years ago. It’s not like I’m still hung up on him.”

Dongho shoots him a pitying look. “You haven’t dated anyone for two years, you look through his SNS accounts sometimes, and every time someone brings him up you look like you’re in _literal hell_. Yeah, Jonghyun, you’re _totally_ over him.”

Jonghyun shrugs. “I was never interested in dating. I don’t like talking about people where they can’t hear it. And I wanted to know how he was doing.”

The pitying look is back. “Okay, Jonghyun. But this isn’t going to end well. You know it won’t.”

Jonghyun does know. He just refuses to let himself dwell on it.

 

Jonghyun met Minki in his first year in college.

Really, the way they met wasn’t anything deserving of a fanfare—they just ran into each other at a party, two people with mutual friends are prone to do. Jonghyun doesn’t remember the exact circumstances of their meeting, but he does remember the way Aaron sat him down in his dorm room and interrogated him until he concluded they had _incredible chemistry_. He remembers Dongho laughing at the idea. “Jonghyun? Our Jonghyun? And Choi Minki? Don’t make me laugh.”

“Well,” Aaron had said. “Sometimes things work out in funny ways.”

Even then, Jonghyun thinks he’d known it was never going to work out. Minki was a fashion design major, and the type of person that everybody knew. Jonghyun was a computer science major, and the type of person that everybody looked over. But somehow it had worked out. For a while.

Jonghyun remembers a lot of good things about dating Minki. He doesn’t remember it being difficult. Maybe he’s just looking through rose-coloured glasses, but he doesn’t remember it being _bad_. Dating Minki had been kind of _calming_ —kind of like he was the escape from the hustle of _being Choi Minki_.

The breakup, then, came as a surprise, to everyone else as well. When Dongho heard, he choked on the coffee he was drinking. Nayoung in his Discrete Mathematics class had patted him on the back and told him she was completely shocked. Professor Park had offered an ear if he ever needed one. Jonghyun hadn’t realized until then how much of his identity on campus revolved around _being Minki’s boyfriend_ , but apparently dating someone popular made you popular by association, and being dumped made you a nobody again.

But that was fine. Because really, Jonghyun had only gone along with that association because Minki had been so _happy_ when he did. So Jonghyun spent his fourth year at college faded into the background and trying not to miss the familiar figure next to him.

 

Really, it’s not difficult to avoid Minki. Jonghyun’s struck by the sudden change—his memory of Minki is someone impossible to avoid, but Minki is rarely in the apartment and when he is he’s not talking. Jonghyun _knows_ Minki, and he knows that Minki feels guilty for camping out in his spare room and eating his food, but really, Jonghyun wishes he would just talk for once. The elephant in the room isn’t the fact that they dated: the elephant in the room is Minki himself.

He’s been living in Jonghyun’s apartment for two weeks before they have a proper conversation.

It’s one of the only nights in those two weeks that Minki has been in the apartment. He’s spent his time finding a job and trying to build his networks back, or so he tells Jonghyun, and so Jonghyun has only really caught glimpses of him. Logically, Jonghyun _knows_ it’s probably a good thing that they aren’t talking, but he’s been thinking over his memories lately and he misses Minki.

Uncharacteristically, it’s Jonghyun who opens the conversation. “Hey. Minki.”

Minki looks up from his phone. “Hmm?” It sounds familiar—too familiar, sucker-punch level familiar. Jonghyun may have had the wind knocked out of him at the familiarity.

“You’ve been here for two weeks,” he begins.

“Oh,” Minki says. “ _Oh_. I’ll leave, if that’s what you want. I think I can find somewhere else to stay—”

Jonghyun cuts him off. “That’s not what I meant. I just meant—you’ve been here for a while and we haven’t really _spoken_.”

Minki frowns quizzically, tilting his head to one side. Jonghyun remembers finding that endearing. (Maybe he still does.) “Spoken about what?”

Jonghyun shrugs. “You were in Paris. How was that? Why did you come back _here_?”

Minki shoots him a smile. “ _Here_ isn’t that bad.”

“That’s not answering the question.”

“No, it’s not.” He puts his phone on a side table and looks at Jonghyun, and it’s only then that Jonghyun realizes that his face has changed. He’s thinner than Jonghyun remembers—he looks _older_ than Jonghyun remembers, too. “Most of my time away was spent fucking around because I didn’t want to face the shame of coming back to Korea.”

“Oh.” That’s not the answer he was expecting. He’d always figured that Minki would be able to make it; he’d always thought that Minki was in Paris better off for himself than he would be in Seoul. “What happened?”

“The company that scouted me fell through. There was some shady stuff going on with the management, and it just kind of closed up one day. I didn’t really…manage to get anything else.”

“So…”

“So I worked a bit in Paris, learned fluent French, dated a couple people. But—I don’t know, I kind of wanted to come back.” Minki shoots him another smile. “I kind of missed you.” (Jonghyun’s heart beats a little faster despite himself.) “You, and Minhyun, and Dongho, and Aaron…” (Jonghyun forces himself not to be disappointed.) “But what about you, how have you been?”

Jonghyun shrugs. He’s not sure if he’s really fit Minki’s definition of _being_. “You wouldn’t want to know. It’s pretty boring.”

Minki frowns. “I do want to know. I’m not twenty and obsessed with adventure anymore, I worked at a Starbucks for over a year. I really can’t talk about being boring.”

Jonghyun shrugs again. It’s weird, this. It’s like getting acquaintanced with Minki all over again. He’s changed a lot, but Jonghyun is sure he has too, is sure that he’s not someone Minki would really _like_ anymore. “I don’t know. I graduated. Do tech support for a company now. It’s alright. Kind of boring, but it could be worse.”

“What kind of company?”

Jonghyun flushes. “I don’t know. Accounting, I think.”

Minki bursts out laughing. “How long have you been working there, Jonghyun?”

“Nine months?”

Minki only laughs harder. “Oh my god. You never change, Kim Jonghyun. Still clueless. Don’t worry, it’s still endearing.” He grins at Jonghyun, and Jonghyun prays to God he’s not blushing. “We should get together one time. Me, you, Minhyun, Dongho, Aaron. Well, not Aaron, he’s not in Korea anymore either, isn’t he. But the four of us. It’ll be fun.”

“Yeah,” Jonghyun says. “Fun. That’s…yeah.”

 

“Why does everyone think this is so hard on me?”

Minhyun surveys Jonghyun from across the table. “You really want me to answer that?”

Jonghyun lowers his head. “Point made.”

“I get that you don’t _think_ you have feelings for him anymore. But you were dating. It would be irrational to assume that you _weren’t_ upset about this.”

Jonghyun shrugs. Minki’s been living with him for almost a month now, and he’s kind of started to view the other boy as just part of the house. He’s got a job now, doing admin for some clothing company whose name Jonghyun didn’t recognize, and he’s been helping out a bit more—stocking up on food that he noticed was missing, doing the dishes, Jonghyun saw him putting the laundry in the washing machine the other day. He took Jonghyun out for barbecue yesterday evening. It was _nice_ , having Minki around.

But Minhyun had given him that pitying look when they’d met up for dinner, and Jonghyun doesn’t understand _why_ because there’s nothing to pity here. Minki is easy to be around. It’s easy to fall back into comfortable friendship. At this point in time, Jonghyun kind of dreads Minki moving out once he makes enough money to rent his own place.

“I’m not upset,” he says. “It’s fine, having him living with me. I’m alright.”

Minhyun nods. “Okay, Jonghyun,” he says. “If you’re sure.”

 

The old Minki is back.

Jonghyun begins to notice it, in the way he leaves his things around the apartment, in the way that his shitty cheap shampoo find a place on the shelf in between what feels like hundreds of Minki’s, in the way that his whole apartment is prone to smelling of Minki’s ridiculously overpowering cologne. Minki has always been almost overwhelming in his mere existence, and now that he’s stopped wanting to sink into the floor, Jonghyun has started to notice it.

It’s been six weeks. Minki hasn’t shown any signs of moving out soon. Jonghyun really, really, really doesn’t want him to.

(Jonghyun may be making another bad decision.)

(He can’t find it in him to care.)

 

“Okay, so, what happened next?”

Jonghyun feels alive. He’s out with Minki, and Dongho, and Minhyun, and he feels more alive than he has in a long time. Minki is grinning from across the table, as if to say _look at this, look how crazy this is_. He’s heard the story that Dongho is telling before, but something about Minki’s glee is making him focus on it twice as much as he did the first time.

“So like. I went home, right? Back to Jeju? And she was _not_ happy. Said she wanted to meet my _family_ , and all that shit, and I was like, Kaeun, we’ve been together for a _month_.” Minki bursts out with another spurt of laughter. Jonghyun’s stomach flips. “So she didn’t just break up with me. She _waited_ until I got back to Seoul, and _then_ told me that in the _four days_ I was in Jeju…”

“She cheated?” Minki asked. He looks at Dongho with wide eyes, and Jonghyun can’t help but notice the mirth on his face. It’s beautiful. Minki’s laugh is obnoxious and he’s staring far too widely and Jonghyun can’t figure out if he actually cares but somehow he can’t help himself from loving it. _No, Jonghyun_ , says a voice in his head.

He silences it and carries on listening.

“Yeah, she did! How ridiculous, right?” Minki’s laughing too hard now, and Jonghyun feels something uncomfortable in his chest listening to his obnoxiously loud, obnoxiously _sweet_ laugh. It feels like—it feels like something he doesn’t want to be feeling. And he wants to ignore it, but he also wants to feel it some more, to feel it so much that it doesn’t even feel uncomfortable anymore.

Minhyun taps him on the shoulder. “Can I borrow you for a second?” There’s an expression on his face that Jonghyun can’t quite place, but it looks serious, and there’s something of concern in it.

They make their way to another part of the restaurant. “Jonghyun,” he says. “You…you need to figure this out.”

“Figure what out?”

Minhyun shakes his head. “Jonghyun. You know what.”

Jonghyun looks away. “No. I don’t.”

 

When they finally start walking home it’s well past midnight, and Jonghyun doesn’t know when Minki started calling the apartment _home_. Minki chatters on the way back, and Jonghyun lets him talk, trying to ignore both the aching familiarity and the uncomfortable feeling in his chest.

He’s not totally listening to Minki, because his head is thinking about what Minhyun said. Because he thinks he knows what Minhyun was telling him to figure out. It’s on the tip of his mind, but his head is refusing to let him think it.

They get in through the door and Jonghyun’s head is swimming, and Minki grins at him. “Thanks,” he says as Jonghyun locks the door.

“For what?”

“For letting me stay here. It’s…it was helpful. I think I’ll move out soon though. But it was nice of you.”

Jonghyun feels the world come crashing at his feet. “No problem,” he manages to say. “No problem at all.”

 

“Jonghyun?” Minki calls.

Jonghyun’s working, but he can hear the whirring of the coffee machine over the tapping of his laptop keyboard. “Yeah?”

“Where do you keep the sugar?”

Jonghyun puts his laptop down, laughing to himself as he walks to the kitchen. “The cupboard under the counter?”

Minki glares at him. “Which one? Are you _aware_ of how many _cupboards under the counter_ you have?”

Jonghyun laughs and shows him, and Minki’s glare fades and is replaced with a small smile. “Thanks. You know, I don’t understand why you just happen to have three bags of sugar under the counter. You don’t drink coffee with sugar.”

“It’s because I remembered you don’t eat or drink anything if there hasn’t been a truck load of sugar dumped into it,” Jonghyun replies. “I stocked up when you first came. For the better.” He’d bought four bags. There’s only one left now, and Jonghyun figures it was probably a good idea.

Minki gives him a small shove. “It’s not a truckload. I do care about eating healthy and all that shit. It’s more like…”

“Like a small car’s worth of sugar,” Jonghyun continues, and Minki shoves him again. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll stop.”

“You’d better.”

Minki shoves a cup across the counter and Jonghyun frowns at it. “What’s this?”

“It’s for you, dumbass. I know you don’t like drinking coffee late at night, but you said you have to do a lot of work so…it’s tea.” Minki flushes as he talks, and Jonghyun finds it _impossibly_ endearing, and—

_Oh no._

He’s just realized what Minhyun was talking about.

 

When Jonghyun and Minki were dating, they talked on the phone a lot.

Not because they didn’t see each other normally, of course. Minki was almost ridiculously clingy back when he was in college—he still was—and Jonghyun would have felt stifled by it if it wasn’t _Minki_. But sometimes Jonghyun would be lonely, or Minki would feel the need to hear Jonghyun’s voice, and so one would phone the other and they’d talk—for hours, sometimes.

Jonghyun shouldn’t have been surprised when his phone rings, but he is. He’s on his lunch break, and he can pick up, but there’s that uncomfortable feeling again and he’s figured out what the feeling is. It’s the feeling he gets when Minki does something a bit too close to how they used to be, when Jonghyun allows himself to believe that maybe they could mean something to each other again.

(It’s not love, but it’s getting there.)

He answers the phone.

“Jonghyun!” says Minki. “I thought you weren’t going to pick up.”

“You sound excited,” Jonghyun says, smiling despite himself. There’s some moments where the feeling becomes less uncomfortable and more warm, when he lets himself accept it and sinks further into this personal hell he’s carved out for himself.

“I am,” Minki said. “I got a promotion.”

“Oh!” Jonghyun snaps up in his seat, and has to keep himself from openly yelling. The guy he works with, Seungcheol, gives him a strange look. “That’s great, Minki!”

He can hear the grin in Minki’s voice. He knows Minki is beaming right now, and something in his stomach yearns to see it. “I am pretty great, aren’t I? I’ll have to take us all out tonight. The four of us.” Jonghyun feels disappointment sink into his stomach. “That’ll be fun, right?”

“Can’t—” Jonghyun begins before he can stop himself. It’s so stupid. He’s stupid to think this is going to end any way but making stuff worse for the both of him. This isn’t two years ago. Minki isn’t going to go off to another country when things get fucked up.

“Yeah?” Minki says.

Jonghyun inhales. “Can’t _we_ just go out? The two of us?” He swallows and tries to salvage the situation. “I’m your roommate. I think I have the right.” He laughs nervously, desperately hoping Minki will take it as a joke.

Minki hums. “Sounds good. I’ll take you out to barbecue later. See you then!”

Jonghyun feels more lost than he ever has.

 

Jonghyun hates being drunk, because it makes whatever emotions he’s feeling double in how much they affect him. And now his sadness is only accentuated by the alcohol and he can feel Minki looking at him with worry and he can’t say that he doesn’t want Minki to worry about him without having to explain why Minki being worried makes his heart sink even further into his chest.

They make their way home relatively early. Jonghyun is drunk enough to _want_ but not drunk enough to _do_ , and he keeps his hands and thoughts to himself. It’s only when they get home that Minki sits him down and says, “Jonghyun.”

“Minki.”

“What’s wrong?” It sounds like more of a statement than a question, and Jonghyun knows that _nothing_ won’t suffice as an answer. The other boy sits down next to him, looking at him with concern, and Jonghyun doesn’t think he can take it any longer. “Did something happen at work?”

“Nothing happened at work, Minki.”

Minki frowns at him and touches his palm to Jonghyun’s forehead. “Are you sick? You don’t have a fever.”

“No,” he manages to say. “I’m not sick.” He knows he’s going to make a stupid decision. Minki is too close to him; his _hand_ is on Jonghyun’s _face_ , and his mouth is just _there_ , and Jonghyun could just—

“So…” Minki said. “Did I do something, Jonghyun? Do you want me to move out?”

 _No_ , Jonghyun wants to say. _Don’t move out. Don’t ever move out._

He can’t say it.

He leans closer and closes the gap between their lips instead.

 

Minki was always a good kisser. Jonghyun’s brain is setting off sirens right now, telling him to stop, telling him that Minki is probably uncomfortable as hell. But Minki’s action’s don’t reflect that, because there’s one hand cupping Jonghyun’s face and another pulling him even closer, and Jonghyun lets in the idea that maybe Minki wants this too.

And then Minki pulls away, and shakes his head. “I can’t,” he says. “I’m sorry, Jonghyun. I’m sorry to do this to you.”

He stands up from the couch, runs a hand through his hair, and heads to his room. “I’ll—I’ll just leave. See you when I see you, Jonghyun.”

He’s gone before Jonghyun can fully process what’s happened.

 

Jonghyun doesn’t sleep much that night either.

 

“What the _fuck_ ,” says Minhyun when Jonghyun picks up the phone. He has to check, to make sure this is actually Minhyun, but no—it’s 8am and Hwang Minhyun has called him. Minhyun is _never_ awake at 8am.

“What are you talking about?” he answers. But he knows what—he knows that Minhyun is calling to ask about _him_. About Minki.

“I have Minki here,” Minhyun growls, “in my apartment, looking like he’s been punched in the stomach, talking some shit about love and sacrifice and _you_. So tell me, Kim Jonghyun, _what_ the _fuck_ did you _do_.”

Jonghyun sighed. “I kissed him.”

“ _You_ kissed him?” Minhyun repeats, as if in disbelief. His voice softens. “Oh, Jonghyun.”

“I know,” Jonghyun says. “I know I fucked up. Is he…is he okay?”

Minhyun sighs. “It’s not…you need to talk to him, Jonghyun. That’s the only way you’re going to figure this out. I’m not some kind of counselor, I can’t mediate, but…you two need to talk.”

Jonghyun’s heart sinks. “Okay, Minhyun. I will.”

 

Talking to Minki proves to be more difficult than you would expect. Living together for two and a half months means that Minki has memorized Jonghyun’s schedule, and Jonghyun sees Minki’s stuff slowly get moved out during the time he’s at work. But he catches Minki one day, and he tries.

“Minki,” he says.

“Don’t,” says Minki. It sounds final.

But Jonghyun knows now, knows that he should have never let Minki go, knows that he should have pressed two years ago and knows that he needs to press now. Because even if Minki has made up his mind, Jonghyun wants him to stay.

“Minki,” he repeats. “We should talk.”

“I’m just moving my stuff out,” Minki says. “I’ll stay at Dongho’s. It’s fine, Jonghyun. Don’t do things you don’t want to do just for me. I know you’ll want me to leave.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.” Minki puts the pile of shirts he was moving into a suitcase down. “Look, Jonghyun. We kissed. You were drunk. I took it too far. And it’s going to be the elephant in the room forever unless I leave, and—”

“I don’t want you to leave!”

His shout surprises even Jonghyun himself, and Minki stares at him, taken aback. “ _I_ kissed _you_. Because I _wanted_ to.” He laughs, but it’s without mirth. “I thought you left because you didn’t want that.”

“I left because I didn’t want to hurt you again,” Minki says. He hangs his head. “That was kind of stupid, wasn’t it?”

Jonghyun gazes at Minki. He’s always been beautiful, but Jonghyun likes this Minki more than the Minki he knew two years ago. “You’re not the person you were. You’re not going to hurt me.” He steps closer. “I want to kiss you again, Minki. I want to kiss you a lot more times.”

Minki is the one to close the gap this time. “So do I,” he murmurs.

 

(They kiss again. They kiss a few more times, actually, and then Minki maneuvers them to sitting on his bed and they kiss some more, and Jonghyun isn’t sure how long they kiss for but his lips are red when they break apart.)

 

“Minki?” Jonghyun whispers. “You’ll stay, right?”

Minki smiles. They’re still close, their foreheads almost touching. “Of course," he says. "Forever, if you want me to.”


End file.
